Reviewed by: Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity by Julian Strube Nicholas Collins julian strube. Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 360. This valuable contribution to the history of Indian Tantra aims to uncover a heretofore neglected period in its development from ancient ritual practices and texts to its contemporary globalized receptions and transformations, that of the nineteenth century. It is during this period wherein the conditions of modernity, confronting both Indian and Western intellectual culture, called forth new reforms and revivals, new syntheses of multiple intellectual and alternative religious currents, and new self-definitions of tradition. By focusing on the Indian situation with regard to Tantra, Strube aims to correct the misconception that modern Tantra owes most of its form to an assimilation of Western esoteric currents, a view he describes as "the west then the rest." Even the term "Western esotericism," Strube contends, was created to distinguish it from "Eastern esotericism" (used in Orientalist scholarship), with both being shaped by modernity, itself having a global, and not merely Western, history. The debates surrounding Tantra in this period were not unidirectionally shaped, but involved a dialogic exchange with Indian and Asian actors, particularly within networks of Bengali Tantrics. Chief among these figures was the tantric guru Shivachandra Vidyarnava, whose students included a number of Indians, as well as the English judge Sir John Woodroffe. Together these students produced the most influential presentations of Tantra in the modern period under the alias "Arthur Avalon," nominally represented by Woodroffe as the "face" of the publications. The Theosophical Society looms large in the dialogue between Westerners and the Bengali Tantrics. Although they reproduced some aspects of colonialism, the Theosophists sided with their Indian interlocutors in their positive estimation of Indian religious traditions, including Tantra. In this they diverged from some earlier orientalist scholars like Muller and Monier Williams, as well as Christian missionaries, who held rather negative views of Tantra, a prejudice that is evident also in some syncretic Hindu reform movements like Roy's Brahmo Samaj. Indian intellectuals defended Tantra in the pages of Theosophical journals and made direct parallels to Western [End Page 456] esoteric movements. Somewhat like Shaiva Siddhanta and Srividya traditions in South India, Bengal had long been home to a vibrant and normative Tantric milieu including Śaiva, Śākta, and Baul poet traditions, and a robust intellectual tradition centered in Navadvip, considered "the Oxford of Bengal." Because they had already been confronted with the multiplicity of traditions in the region (Vaishnava, bhakti, Islamic, Shaiva, Shakta, etc.), universalistic religious conceptions had developed prior to Western influence, which were adapted to the new intercultural situation in modernity. Even Theosophy was perceived as part of the Indian sanātana (eternal) dharma, an estimation shared by Theosophists in terms of what they saw as a common "Aryan" past and an esoteric religious core of universal unity. Such universalist tendencies were paralleled by Unitarians and Spiritualists, as well as by the Indian Brahmo Samaj, many of whose members were leaders in the Bengal Theosophical Society. Theosophical thought absorbed and was altered by contributions from Indian sources, while Indians made correlations between their own systems and Western movements like Spiritualism, which had been present in India since the 1860s. The Brahmos in particular absorbed Western social reformist ideas and applied them to their own reformations of Hinduism, deemphasizing certain occult and ritual elements in an effort to restore a "pure" Hindu dharma rooted in the Vedas and Upanishads, while also arguing against caste distinctions and championing female education. In contrast, the Bengali revivalists such as Shivachandra and his students pursued similar aims, but did so by appealing to the ancient Śāstras and to Tantric, as well as Vedic tradition, rather than modern Western social reformist ideas. To the extent that this revivalism was also in dialogue with Western concepts and authors, there was always an implied element of reform as well. Shivachandra himself, however, had little engagement with Western sources, spoke no English, and was highly critical of the Western-influenced Brahmo and Arya Samaj. Born in 1860 into an eleventh-generation Tantric family in Kumarkhali, educated at Navadvip, he was a...
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Sep 19, 2024
Baqar Hassan Syed 
Open Access